It is usually the case that a person having more than a minimum amount of income employs a banking institution to store the income as funds in one or more accounts, and also to distribute such funds in the regular course of living, such as for example to pay bills and to acquire cash for spending. Typically, although by no means exclusively, the person has both a checking account from which funds may be drawn to pay corresponding checks, and a savings account from which funds may be stored at and saved. Also typically, the funds in the savings account earn an amount of interest, usually expressed as an annual percentage rate, and the funds in the checking account may also earn an amount of interest, also usually expressed as an annual percentage rate. However, the interest paid on funds in a checking account is usually far less than the interest paid on funds in a savings account.
Accordingly, the person should be careful to ensure that excess funds in the checking account thereof are transferred to the savings account thereof, if only to earn a higher rate of interest on such excess funds. That said, though, the person is probably like most people and therefore does not have the discipline necessary to manage the funds in the checking and savings accounts thereof so as to in fact ensure that such excess funds in the checking account are indeed transferred to the savings account. In particular, such management entails regularly monitoring both the checking and savings accounts as well as bills and other expenses that are regularly paid from such checking account, projecting an amount of funds that must reside in the checking account at any particular time to pay such bills and other expenses, and transferring the funds between the accounts at appropriate times.
The effort necessary to perform such management tasks may seem overwhelming to the person, and the person at some point may resign himself or herself to just leave all the funds in the checking account to ensure that such funds are available to pay the bills and other expenses. Of course, doing so represents a lost opportunity to earn increased interest on the excess funds that are not in fact necessary to be in such checking account but that instead could be in the savings account.
Accordingly, a need exists for systems and methods for implementing an intelligent banking account system that earns increased interest for the person by attempting to minimize the time the excess funds of the person reside in the checking account and correspondingly maximize the time such excess funds reside in the savings account. More particularly, a need exists for such a system and method that identifies such excess funds based on income of the person received and bills and other expenses of the person paid, and that automatically moves such excess funds from the checking account to the savings account.